


Your Delicate Friend

by meanoldauthor



Series: Mean Old Lady [18]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Animal Death, F/F, Femslash February, Fluff, Pre-Canon, i love these dorks even though this is barely fallout at this point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 21:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13667178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanoldauthor/pseuds/meanoldauthor
Summary: "Oh, so setting my cousin up is just 'meddlesome' and 'embarrassing', is it?"





	Your Delicate Friend

“Just _talk_ to her.”

Peda looked up at her from the ground, chewing a hangnail on her thumb. “And say what? ‘Hi, you’re pretty, please sit on my face?’”

Sitting atop a boulder, Adal gave her a withering look. “I wouldn’t open with it, but it _would_ break the ice.”

She sighed, looking out on the mountainside, the upper parts of the slope just starting to catch the dawn light. It was dull to be a hunter at Crossroads, with the bighorner and thorn-elk herds so tightly managed to keep from overhunting all summer. Adal pursed her lips. All that energy just went into courting and group drama, she supposed.

“You could bring her flowers,” Adal said, looking down. Peda raised her eyebrows, chewing her thumb again. “That’s a classic.”

“You’re sixteen.”

“And?”

“You’re an idiot.”

“And you’re in your twenties and don’t know how to flirt, so who’s losing here?” Adal said. Peda gave her annoyed look and tugged her hood up, shifting to put her back to her. “You’re angry ‘cause I’m right!”

“You’re gonna scare the elk off.”

“What elk?” Adal grumbled, using her spear as a prop as she slid down the side of the boulder. Peda didn’t look over as she settled beside her. “She’s a forager. Bring her something nice, ask if she can use them.”

Peda had her chin in her hand, the other tapping the haft of her spear. “What if they’re some garbage weed that gives you gas or something? I know jack shit about flowers.”

“That’s why they ought to be pretty,” Adal said. “Aren’t pretty flowers better medicine? Or something?”

“I think it’s usually the other way around,” Peda said, stretching a leg. “Aren’t things that’re healthy usually awful?”

“I mean…” Adal thought back to whining over a meal as a child, and her mother wagging a finger at her, _eat up, they’re good for you_. “Maybe.”

They both stiffened at movement by the elk scrape downslope of them, and relaxed as a bird flew off from the trees. Peda sighed. The sun rose higher, bathing the mountainside in gold.

“Flirting’s awful,” Adal said, encouraging.

Peda pressed her face harder into her hand, turning her frown into a grimace.

“Must be good for you, then.”

She put both hands over her face, making an agonized sound.

Adal elbowed her. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I drop dead on the spot,” Peda said, voice muffled, lips forced into an odd pucker between the edges of her hands. “I fuck up and call her the wrong name. I fuck up and call _myself_ the wrong name…”

“You won’t do that,” Adal said, rubbing her shoulder. “You’ll be fine, just be natural. ‘I found these while we were out hunting, and…’”

Peda made an inarticulate noise into her hands.

Adal rolled her eyes, giving her a little shake, and glanced downhill. She hissed, pointing.

A thorn-elk bull was approaching the scrape, head up and scenting the air. Its antlers were wider than her spread arms, each main beam covered in dozens of short spikes, so thickly encrusted they looked like cactus spines. The topmost were bloody, strips of velvet sloughing free of the bone beneath.

Peda was already up in a crouch, spear in hand. Adal was a moment behind, watching the buck scan the mountainside before settling, facing sidelong on the slope, one eye pointing uphill, the other down. Peda gestured for Adal to come around, flanking, and began to creep directly towards it herself.

Adal snuck behind the boulder before descending, keeping an eye on the little stand of trees as she went. Even in velvet, those antlers would hurt, never mind a kick…

She shifted to watch her footing on a steep stretch, trying not to dislodge any stones and give herself away. She stopped short at a stand of reddish-pink flowers, tucked in a sheltered cranny. A glance toward the scrape showed no movement, no call from Peda, and she scooted aside, gathering the largest of the blooms and trimming them free with her spear tip.

There was a bleat from downhill, and she started, nearly tumbling down the slope. “Adal!” Peda yelled, and she scrambled to grab her spear by the grip.

The bull charged towards her, shaking Peda’s spear free from its side. Adal shoved the stems of the flowers in her teeth, lining up a throw as it balked, coming up on her. The spear sank behind it shoulder as it wheeled, and it made a scant few strides more before its legs gave out.

“Did you get it?” Peda called, trotting after. “What the hell, I thought you were right…” She scowled at Adal, the flowers still in her mouth. “Really.”

She spat them out and waved them at her. “You’ll thank me later, cousin.”

“You could have come back for them,” she said, collecting her spear and headed for their kill.

“I mean…” Adal sighed. “Yeah, okay, _maybe_ , but we got it, didn’t we?”

Peda rolled her eyes as she knelt next to the carcass, drawing her knife.

***

“This is stupid,” Adal moaned, adjusting the spear pole on her shoulder. “Why did we have to take the biggest thing on the mountain?”

“Because…” Peda stopped to pant, the altitude getting the better of her. “ _You_ didn’t want to walk that far, and picked the first scrape we saw.”

Adal looked back, the elk hanging between them. “Well, then imagine if we carried it up from the Libby pass, like _you_ wanted.”

Peda just groaned and picked the pole up again, shoving Adal uphill with it.

Crossroads was bustling so early in the morning, audible even before they crested the hill. The guard on the trail waved to them as they approached, and turned back to whistle. A few Walker, of a mix of disciplines, poked their heads around a fence before coming to help carry the carcass.

Adal and Peda let them take it, continuing into camp. Doors and windows propped open on the central cluster of buildings to let in the breeze, the clearing below a field of tents and the occasional handmade shack. Walker milled between them, a few nodding or waving to the pair as they went. Adal jerked a thumb at a loose group of tents. “I ought to go find ma, she wanted to know if there was any bighorner sign to the east.”

“Wasn’t she still trying to set you up with Willa’s youngest? With no front teeth?” Peda said, hands on her hips.

Adal stopped, mouth open, and shut it as she pointed the opposite direction. “You were camped over here, right?”

Peda snorted and gestured for her to follow. The Walker had set up in loose groups on the clearing, closer kin clustering together, or else bands that stayed more or less the same as they walked. Adal nodded to a few cousins and uncles as they went, some calling after her about the hunt.

“Went fine, went fine,” she yelled at her mother’s sister. “Venison tonight!”

She gave her a thumbs-up, and Adal joined Peda next to a banked campfire, leaning back on her pack. “So what’s up today?”

Peda shrugged. “Some of the boys were talking about a climbing competition, I thought I might go and embarrass them all.”

“Hm,” Adal said, eyeing the flowers where she’d stuck them into her canteen. “Probably attract an audience.”

“Don’t.”

Adal leaned over, peering into the next group of tents. A few foragers were tending a rack of herbs, drying in the sun. One of them, a young woman in a hood patterned in roses, was laughing as she tied up a new bundle. “She’s cute. Fen, you said?”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Peda said, sitting up. “Adal, I’m begging you, I’ll just make a fool of myself.”

“Then you’re being honest out of the gate,” she said, standing. 

“ _Please_ no,” Peda hissed, trying to grab her ankle.

Adal hopped on one leg to avoid her, holding up the flowers. “Fine, I won’t. I’ll give them to Elma, she’ll know what they’re good for.”

She didn’t look back, heading towards the oldest of the foragers, her hood so sun-bleached it matched her white hair. A few steps away, she turned sharply enough to make the woman next to her start. “Hello. Fen, is it?”

She heard Peda make a strangled noise behind her. Fen pushed her hood up, delicate features drawn in surprise. “Out of Desaire and Finn, yes. You’re…Adal? Jia’s daughter?”

“Jia and Ouray, that’s me,” Adal said. She held out the flowers. “My cousin found these while we were out hunting, and was wondering if you might find them useful.”

“Oh, columbine. Yes, they have a few uses,” she said, taking them. “Very pretty.”

“Peda thought so, too,” Adal said, turning to gesture. Peda had stood, still trying to straighten her clothes, scratching a bit of dry blood off her skirt. She looked up, maybe feeling eyes on her, and flushed. Fen gave her a tentative wave and held up the flowers, smiling and raising her eyebrows.

Peda looked ready to die, but stepped towards them. Fen hid her smile behind the flowers, a little too wide to just be politeness.

“I’ll leave you to talk,” Adal said as she approached. She winked at her as they passed, and Peda gave her a slightly appalled look past her grin, and a punch on the arm.

Adal wrinkled her nose and put a hand over the spot, not looking back until she was outside the ring of tents. The two of them stood together, sharing bashful looks as they spoke. Peda gestured at the rack of plants, and Fen brightened, motioning her to follow as she pointed, talking animatedly.

She grinned and hiked her pack higher, wandering deeper into camp.


End file.
